Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
Sure, a machine is great for doing a specific task, but if the point is to colonize a place with living creatures, you need living creatures to do that.
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^ That.
There is no doubt that at the cost of a single human mission you could finance a few dozens of robotic missions that would cover a much wider area. The goal of sending people to mars would be having people on mars.
If we wanted to create a colony of robots for robots, there are much better targets for that then Mars. There are some limited gains for them if they want to go back to space - mining water for propellant and the possibility of aerobreaking and saving up on fuel - but even for that purpose they'd probably still be better off without having to fight against a planets gravity in the first place.
On an only slightly related note, if you meant we're better off going humanity+ and making ourselves into machines... My previous title - lord of the Hermocentric orbit - came from a private joke out of a conversation I had with someone on where is the best place in the solar system to install a server farm.